They Can't Hang Me (1938) by James Ronald

In 2023, Moonstone Press published Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 1: The Dr. Britling Stories (2023), collecting three novelettes, the once elusive novel Six Were to Die (1932) and an excellent non-series short story ("Blind Man's Bluff," 1929), starting the process of reprinting all of James Ronald's novels and short stories – spread out over fourteen volumes. The stories collected in the first volume are better written than to be expected from the pulps with a regrettably short-lived detective character, but the plots left something to be desired. However, Murder in the Family (1936), marquee title from Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 2: Murder in the Family (2023), proved to be a surprisingly sophisticated, character-driven crime drama. And an excellent crime drama at that.

I wanted to sample Ronald's often praised impossible crime fiction and Six Were to Die failed to scratch that itch. So looked forward to the release of Stories of Crime & Detection, vol. 4: They Can't Hang Me (2024) which include one of Ronald's reputedly best impossible crime novels.

John Norris called They Can't Hang Me (1938) "a corker of a mystery novel" with two impossible crimes "one of which is worthy of Carr," while Jim Noy gave the book a five-star review ("freakin' loved it") and included it in his "100 Books for a Locked Room Library" – commenting that "the impossible gassing is as good a ploy as any Carr dreamed up." High praise indeed! But is They Can't Hang Me good enough to be included in the "New Locked Room Library" currently being compiled? Time to find out

Twenty years ago, the eccentric Lucius Marplay owned the London newspaper the Echo, but the paper was stolen from underneath him by the current managing editor, Mark Peters. He and his cronies made a personal fortune from their hostile takeover. Marplay was locked up as a certified lunatic and forgotten about. Even his young daughter, Joan, was told he had died and was buried abroad when she was a baby. When the story begins, Joan overhears a conversation at a garden party and learns her father is still alive. So the people around her have something to explain. Naturally, Joan wants to meet her father, however, this demand sets in motion a series of events culminating in wholesale murder at the Echo office building.

Lucius Marplay is sane most of the time except on one point: an unquenchable desire to kill the men, Mark Peters, Ambrose Craven, Sinclair Ellis and Nigel Partridge, whom he holds responsible for his situation. Marplay whittled away the decades by filling "dozens of notebooks with ingenious schemes to end their lives" ("Oh, but they aren't wild plans. They're amazingly shrewd"), which gets to put into practice when he manages to escape during a mental evaluation ("MADMAN TRICKS ALIENIST!"). Before too long, the first death announcement is made and one of the four partners, Ellis, is bludgeoned to death in his private office as the Echo building is locked down and swarmed with armed policemen – resembling a beleaguered fortress. However, Marplay continues to strike with impunity. Every murder is preceded by a death announcement and a note is left with each victim reading, "PAID IN FULL." A familiar setup for the pulp-style "miracle menace" thriller!

An important man under police protection getting bumped off in a locked and guarded or a group of people trapped in a house under siege is a popular setup for a pulp-style locked room. I have encountered them time, and time, again in my admittedly still limited reading. John Russell Fearn's Account Settled (1949) and the posthumous The Man Who Was Not (2005) come to mind as does Gerald Verner's novella "The Beard of the Prophet" (1937) and The Last Warning (1962). Some other examples include Brian Flynn's Invisible Death (1929), T.H. White's Darkness at Pemberley (1932) and more recently Anne van Doorn's short story "De man die liever binnen bleef" ("The Man Who Rather Stayed Inside," 2021). However, Ronald might very well have written the delivered the masterpiece of these pulp-style, beleaguered locked room mysteries with They Can't Hang Me and so much more heaped on top of it.

Firstly, the plot is pleasantly busy with multiple characters working at cross purposes without the story becoming a tangled mess. Joan is determined to learn the truth in order to clear her father's name by coaxing a confession from one of the four men and goes undercover as a secretary/typist, which places her in the cross-hairs of the lecherous, fittingly named Ambrose Craven. Fortunately, she has two allies in her guardian, Miss Agatha Trimm, and the Echo's gossip columnist, Lord Noel Stretton, who has fallen in love with Joan. There's an ex-newspaper reporter and Fleet Street drunk, Flinders, who's always hanging around the Echo building trying to make a buck. My favorite character is unquestionably the Scottish private detective, Alastair MacNab, attached to the New World Investigation Bureau. MacNab has been hired by the asylum to help sniff out Marplay, "I've aye had the knack o' understanding whit goes on in an unbalanced br-ain," who's granted unrestricted access to the building ("if he had been able to foresee how much of nuisance Alastair MacNab was to be..."). A fine character in the tradition of Leo Bruce's Sgt. Beef and Carter Dickson's Sir Henry Merrivale ("you aren't one of Doctor Hammond's patients by any chance?"). Secondly, beside the characters, plot, excellent storytelling and pacing, there's the setting itself. James gives an insight look of the newspaper business and these specialized backgrounds or setting are always a plus when handled properly (i.e. not an info dump of the author's research or first-hand experience). More importantly, Ronald fully exploited the setting to enhance and further the plot.

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) lists only one impossibility for They Can't Hang Me, but there are three and understand why the second one got overlooked, but the third, non-deadly impossibility deserves to be acknowledged – which is a small gem. Peters and the Echo suddenly find themselves in a competitive fight with the rivaling Evening Dispatch. Despite the entire building being under lock down and closely guarded, the Evening Dispatch beats the Echo throughout the story in putting out the news of the developing murders first. Sometimes complete with photographs of the crime scene. But who was leaking information? And how? Not only is the building locked down and guarded, but the switchboard monitors every telephone call. The impossible leakage information is, in my opinion, the best of the three impossibilities as the culprit is what makes its solution great and loved the clue of (SPOILER/ROT13: gur yvivat yhapu).

Marplay having seemingly unfettered access to the building can be counted as a quasi-impossible and ongoing situation, but found Marplay's earlier actions after escaping to be more interesting. After a twenty year spell in an asylum, Marplay proves to be surprisingly resourceful, once outside, collecting and trading money or items to be used in his shenanigans. Such as pawning the coat he stole from the psychiatrist or taking a curtain cord from one scene to use it another like it's a video game. And his presence throughout the story is very well handled. But what about the two locked room murders?

One of the men is shot in a locked and tightly guarded room "as impregnable as one of the vaults of the Bank of England," while policemen were sitting only a few steps away in the anteroom. Another one dies of cyanide, while surrounded by police guards, but no apparent way the poison could have been administrated. The shooting is definitely the better of the two with a novel new way to shoot someone in a locked and guarded room. A trick that by itself could have been developed into something really good as it has enough aspects to have carried a novel-length locked room mystery. The problem with pulp writers (for us, anyway) is that the finer plot details and clueing aren't always treated with exactly the same care or rigor as their Golden Age counterparts. Something that can be a problem for the uncompromising plot purist, but nothing that should deter you from enjoying this lively, well written and characterized story mixing the lurid pulp-thriller with the traditional locked room and impossible crime story.

James Ronald was a pulp writer, but not your average, dime-a-dozen second-stringer who dominated the pulps. Ronald could very well have been one of its best writers, certainly better than my favorite second-stringers, who surprised me with Murder in the Family and entertained me on every page of They Can't Hang Me ("incredible, unbelievable, fantastic, impossible"). They Can't Hang Me is fun with a capital F and pulp with a P. So bring on the reprints of Cross Marks the Spot (1933) and Death Croons the Blues (1934)!

Bunraku Noir (2023) by K.O. Enigma

Earlier this month, I reviewed Aosaki Yugo's short story "Knockin' On Locked" (2014), introducing the eponymous "Knockin' On Locked Door" series, which specialized intertwining intricate plots with equally puzzling motives – nominated in the first round to compile a "New Locked Room Library." Alexander, of the Detection Collection, heads the project commenting that the results of the first round of nominations is exquisite. I called part of the selected titles "exotic material" for a reason. The fanlation of Aosaki Yugo's short story is one of them, but not the most surprising one that came out of the first round.

That honor goes to Bunraku Noir: The Hardboiled Samurai & His Digital Doll (2023) by the pseudonymous, self-published "K.O. Enigma." A self-published locked room mystery novel touted as "a murder mystery for the modern, online age" from "the Ellery Queen of the Vtuber Era." A tongue-in-cheek, quasi self-conscious mystery poking fun at everything from the genre itself to Japanese derived subcultures like anime and Vtubers. Enigma and Bunraku Noir can be grouped with A. Carver, James Scott Byrnside, H.M. Faust and Jim Noy who either took inspiration from the Japanese shin honkaku mysteries in all its forms and guises (e.g. anime, manga, games, etc.) or incorporated certain elements (e.g. corpse puzzles and young protagonists). Their treatment of the classically-styled detective story and locked room mysteries is distinctly different from other modern-day impossible crime writers like Tom Mead, Gigi Pandian and J.S. Savage. I associate the former springing forth from the translation wave and the latter with the Golden Age reprint renaissance, which have given rise to two entirely new, almost incomparable, strains of impossible crime fiction. Bunraku Noir occupies the extreme end of the Japanese inspired, Golden Age-style detective story. So let's dive right in!

Royham Malone is an Australian who has "the name of a gangster in a poor-man's Raymond Chandler novel," but "the soul of a samurai" committed to the bushido code and rattling his katana. In reality, Malone is a shut-in obsessed with Japanese culture whose room is cluttered with empty cans, bottles and takeout containers surrounded by a collection of manga and body pillows – always having to say "I'm not a creep, you know." Like a catchphrase. Although he has years worth of questionable content, "terabytes of cartoon smut," stored in the cloud and spends his mother's money on a Vtuber, Osamu Rako. And for those readers not up on their niche-and subcultures, everything explained in the story. Royham had thrown a lot of money at his beloved Vtuber that he was invited to a private stream with Rako. Malone is thrown in a turmoil and the stream is a disaster, which is not only due to Malone being oblivious to his lack of social skills. The stream ends with Rako screaming, growling ("...I'll carve you") and another voice saying "treating her fans like shit," before a crash hurled the stream offline.

So what to do? Malone not only adheres to the samurai code, but also has a motto: "when in doubt, just ask Iri." Irene Bluth is the one known as Iri, pronounced eerie, who was in the high school Film Club together with Malone ("just like something out of Kindaichi"). She has been his tard wrangler adviser/soundboard ever since.

Iri believes the whole thing is a hoax to drive up views ("...youtubers do this all the time"), but decided to help when all of Rako's accounts get deleted overnight. She makes an astute deduction about the wording of the invitation emailed to Malone suggesting the person behind the Vtub persona of Osamu Rako is also Australian. So they began to dig through news reports and obituaries, which were scanned and dismissed until one name remained, Anna Hitae – a twenty-one year old pharmaceuticals student. Anna Hitae had apparently committed suicide by leaping from her apartment balcony around the same time the stream ended. What's more, when they begin poking around the scene, they discover the doors to both the apartment and somehow the balcony were locked from the inside when Hitae supposedly jumped to her death ("...classic locked room shit").

I assume this brief outline of the first handful of chapters still sounds reasonably conventional to most, despite some of the obvious modern touches to the characters. Something along the lines of Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun (1987) meets Ellery Queen, but Bunraku Noir is more than a quirky, Japanese-themed locked room mystery populated with a couple of unusual, dodgy characters. Enigma basically wrote a what-is-it? making it difficult to describe or comment on what happens next without spoiling the fun. That and the fact that the story, plot developments and characters get a lot weirder and metatextual at times. Bunraku Noir rooted itself in the soil of Ellery-in-Wonderland complete with a lengthy "Challenge from the Reader." However, I can make a one, or two, veiled comments and observations.

First of all, the story introduces a third detective who, in a way, takes charge of their private investigation. A character who could not have existed in any previous era of the genre and truly a fitting detective for the modern, online age, but even better was his first meeting with Malone – which handed the book its most memorable scene. The first meeting between the two can only be described as a shonen manga style battle, "more than two detectives on a case is far too much," ending in a truce. But it was close. And you have to read to understand why. Hey, if you're going for absurd comedy, you might as well go all the way. That scene is going to ensures Bunraku Noir stays lodged in my memories for a long time to come. Interesting to note here is that this third detective imitates the voice of the famous private detective Oscar Poole ("his thing was solving real-life impossible crimes") to interview people over the phone, which recalls the voice altering gadget Conan uses to imitate Richard Moore. Case Closed is referenced several times.

Where the plot is concerned, the handling of the locked room situations stands out. Not because of an ingeniously-contrived or original trick, certainly not that, but how it ended up answering that age-old question why someone would go through the trouble of creating a locked room mystery. However, the strength of the story doesn't hinge purely on a good idea, trick or plot-twist (or several of them), but the surprising picture that appears when all the pieces are clicked into place – allowing for some unexpected revelations and turns of events. There's a small, subtle difference between fooling people and surprising them. Enigma did both with Bunraku Noir. On top of being tremendously entertaining, odd and unorthodox at times, but fun and entertaining nonetheless. That's not bad for a fan written web release and urge Enigma to get a physical edition published, because it would be a shame if something this good and fun becomes forgotten and lost in ten, twenty years time due to internet decay.

So cutting another needlessly long, quasi-coherent rambling short, Bunraku Noir is better than a fan written web release has any right to be. A shrewdly plotted, genre-savvy parody that comes strongly recommended. Only one, small caveat. The more purist minded should try going into the story with an open mind. Just like Faust's Gospel of V (2023), Bunraku Noir is going to make some wonder what the hell you're reading, but it's going to change up, freshen and enrich your (neo) GAD reading. Just not in the way we've come to expect from other traditional-minded locked room specialists. Feel free to disagree. You can find, download and read Bunraku Noir here.

I'll leave you with this short excerpt from a disastrous conversation between Malone and one of the suspects, Ellen.

Ellen: "I don't really want to say this but it's a good thing you're real. If I was reading a book and you were the detective I was meant to live vicariously through, I'd shut it, throw it in the trash, and demand my money back."

Malone: "What if the book was free?"

Ellen: "Then I'd find the author and beat their ass."

The Tragedy at Freyne (1927) by Anthony Gilbert

"Anthony Gilbert" was the penname of Lucy Malleson, an inventive, productive and a shade unconventional mystery writer, who wrote over sixty novels, dozens of short stories and a number of radio-plays – mostly starring her series-detective, Arthur Crook. A London-based lawyer of ill-repute and dubious ethics who lived up to his name. So a tremendously fun character deliberately made vulgar to counter the popular image of the debonair, sophisticated and meddlesome sleuth a la Philo Vance. However, the first novel published under the "Anthony Gilbert" name introduced her first, short-lived detective-character, Scott Egerton.

Scott Egerton is "a member of the least democratic body on this earth, the British House of Commons," who's predicted to have a bright future in politics ("he's the type that's cut out for leadership"). Beside being a rising young politician, Egerton got to play detective in ten novel before getting replaced by Crook. That's one of the reasons why Crook eclipsed his predecessor, but not the only one as nearly the entire series had been out-of-print for decades. Even today, the likes of The Mystery of the Open Window (1929) and The Night of the Fog (1930) remain out-of-print and somewhat elusive. Nor does it help that the easiest accessible, most well-known title in the series, The Body on the Beam (1932), reputedly is a dud ("do people really enjoy this sort of the book?"). So never paid much attention to the Scott Egerton series except for the first novel.

The Tragedy at Freyne (1927) introduced both the "Anthony Gilbert" penname and the Scott Egerton character mystery readers, which has an entry in Brian Skupin's Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019). So, on the special impossible crime wish list it went, but The Tragedy at Freyne was one of those annoyingly obscure, long out-of-print and scarce titles – hard to come by until recently. The Tragedy at Freyne was reprinted twice in the past two years. First by a small, independent outfit named Spitfire Publishers, but their editions aren't available in my country. If you ask me, that reeks suspiciously of Dutchphobia! Fortunately, Dover Publications added their own edition of The Tragedy at Freyne to the Dover Mystery Classics last April.

Alan Ravenswood, narrator of the story, is one of the people who make up the house party at Freyne Abbey. The home of his cousin, Lady Catherine Chandos, and her husband, Sir Simon Chandos, who are entertaining a small crowd. There's Sir Simon's ward, Rosemary St. Claire, who's about to be engaged to the rising young politician, Scott Egerton. Guy Bannister is a well-known war correspondent, scientific journalist and generally considered to be a charming party guess. Captain Rupert Dacre is the Chandos' reclusive, shell shocked neighbor who lives at Dacre Court "like a monk, with three ex-servicemen." Lastly, Sir Chandos' odd secretary, Miss Althea Dennis. Ravenswood finds everyone at Freyne Abbey on edge. Not without reason or consequences.

After the house party, Sir Simon Chandon apparently retreated to his study to commit suicide by taking an overdose of morphine. The door was locked from the inside with the key found inside his pocket and the windows were securely shuttered. A rambling suicide note is found on the desk with Sir Simon still tightly holding a pen in his right hand, which Egerton knows is the wrong hand. Sir Simon was left handed. So murder cleverly disguised as suicide and the police pounce on Dacre, because he was having an affair with Lady Chandos.

The Tragedy at Freyne has all the hallmarks of a fairly standard, 1920s mystery novel, but even this early in her career, Gilbert tried to mix different styles and upturning certain conventions – which resulted in a very different type of twenties locked room mystery. First of all, the victim is not a tyrannical patriarch who commonly end up murdered in these type of mysteries, but a tragic figure and truly blameless victim. Sir Simon is an immense ugly man, "a shambling, inhuman figure," who moved with "a leaning-forward pose of body that suggested the ape" and features that were "a throw-back to monkey ancestors." Before he was murdered, Sir Simon was already “dying by inches of cancer.” However, the story is still streaked with "inexcusable melodrama" from the Victorian-era, but Gilbert already showed a talent for handling dramatics and employed the dramatics to weave some pleasing patterns into the plot. It's almost a shame the arrest of Dacre didn't explode into a full-blown courtroom dramatics. Another notable difference is how the introduction of the detective is handled.

After pointing out the murderer's mistake, Egerton is largely absent and only spoken about until reappearing during the final leg of the story. Egerton is given something of a backstory during his absence concerning a sordid episode from his youth that could cast a dark cloud over both his career opportunities and engagement. So, if you read The Tragedy at Freyne in 1927, you can't be blamed for thinking Egerton is just one of the more suspicious characters in the cast of suspects. When the police arrested Dacre, the defense hires a private detective, "Stuart will get the truth if any man can," to ferret out information. The detective work through out the story is mix of humdrum detection and Sherlock Holmes (donning disguises) with the highlight being Gilbert's brilliant take on the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.

The Tragedy at Freyne presents Gilbert as a mystery writer full of promise and potential, but how she handled the ending shows she still had some work and fine-tuning to do. Egerton returns to the story with an admittedly pretty good and satisfying solution in hand, which then turns into "a race against time" to gather evidence before the murderer boards a ship. It deflated and undermined the clever, twisty solution when it follows by evidence collecting. Regrettably, the locked room-trick is simple and routine, but enjoyed the police being convinced the murderer exited the locked room through a secret passage they were unable to find. So don't get it solely for its impossible crime element.

So while the ending could have been handled better, The Tragedy at Freyne is still a cut, or two, above the average, 1920s mystery novel and stands as a promising debut from a diamond-in-the-rough full with potential – only needing further cutting and polishing. Which is fortunately exactly what happened as Gilbert would go on the pen the Agatha Christie-worthy The Clock in the Hat Box (1939) and the late, but excellent, She Shall Die (1961). The Tragedy at Freyne comes recommended as a herald of the 1930s Golden Age detective novel.

Note for the curious: Amazingly, The Tragedy at Freyne was published in the same year as Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927). One of the worst Golden Age detective novels ever written and likely the book that drove Ronald A. Knox to write down "The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929).

Date for Murder (1942) by Louis Trimble

Louis Trimble was an American academic and, as noted elsewhere, "a forgotten writer of the post-World War II," who wrote science-fiction, westerns, detectives and penned two science-fiction mystery hybrid novels, Anthropol (1968) and The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy (1970) – forming the short-lived Anthropol Detective Agency series. Trimble also has an impossible crime novel to his credit, Fit to Kill (1941), which "follows in the well-worn footsteps of Philo Vance and the early copy-cattish Ellery Queen." Believe it or not, Trimble's dalliance with the locked room mystery is not what attracted my attention.

In The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47 (2009), Boucher briefly describes Trimble's Date for Murder (1942), "service station man Mark Warren solves lurid killings on Coachella date ranch, featuring unique collection of bedroom-and-bath alibis." Summing the story up as a "spicy-detective."

Trimble definitely tried to go for the pulp aesthetics in Date for Murder, but by today's standard, the story's as tame as a neutered tomcat. For starters, "date ranch," is not a euphemism for a desert brothel, or something sleazy, but simply a date farm producing packages of the sweet fruit from the date palm ("Manders' finest") – which makes it still a seedy enough place for murder or two. Date for Murder stands closer to S.S. van Dine and Ellery Queen than the pulps. Or, to be more precise, the Van Dineans from outside New York like Anthony Boucher, Clyde B. Clason and Kirke Mechem. More on that in a moment.

Mark Warren is an ex-crime reporter on borrowed time, "six months, a year at most," whose health forced him to move to the date country of the Coachella Valley in the Californian desert. There he works as a part-time country correspondent and mans an out-of-the-way gas station, which is where the story begins. One morning, Idell Manders pulls into the station, filled her tank and went off again when a car came off the Palm Springs highway as she drove past it and shot at her – other car turned and started chasing her. Mark naturally followed and found her hiking half mile from Coachella. She managed to shake them off by driving the car over a cliff ("she set the throttle and jumped out"). I don't know if it's commendable or a missed opportunity that Trimble didn't title the story Fill Her Up. Anyway, Mark accompanies her back home, to the Manders' Range, where they find a drinking party in full swing. The car she was riding in belonged to one of the guests, James Link, who appears to be "frightened half out of his senses."

Next morning, Idell calls Mark to ask him to return to the ranch, because she found Link's body at the bottom of the swimming pool. And it wasn't an accident. A rope was "lashed around his waist, holding him against the ladder, tied to a rung." When the body is pulled from the pool, she notices "the apparent appearance of strangulation" and "that faint, bitter smell" associated with cyanide poisoning. There you first echo of the Van Dine-Queen School.

First of all, there's the bizarre situation of the crime scene itself ("why should he be poisoned and then drowned?") or why the murderer found it necessary to carry the victim to the pool and fix him to the bottom rung ("...a pretty big risk"). Mark Warren is only there on invitation and basically an outsider/amateur detective, but knows and closely works together with the policeman in charge, Sheriff Tom Rourke – who know each other from Mark's days as a crime reporter. Naturally, the movement of the characters around the crime scene plays a key role, patterned into that collection of bathroom-and-bed alibis, complemented by some modest, but bizarre and colorful, clues. Such as poisoned dates, a dead canary, a private pet cemetery, a stopped clock, a suicide buried as natural death and two additional murders. And, of course, there's a spot of blackmail hovering in the background.

Those additional murders deserve a brief comment. I picked Date for Murder with the express purpose to not have to tag another review with the "locked room mysteries" toe-tag, mix things up a little, which is why my heart sank when the second victim locked herself into a room where the murderer, somehow, appeared to polish her off. The door even had to be broken down like a proper locked room murder. Who would genuinely believe I had no idea the story had an impossible crime and only picked it for the collection of unusual alibis? Well, the locked room angle was quickly dispelled to return to the other, more pressing questions. Such as the alibis. The third murder happens late into the story and now almost everyone appears to have a perfectly good alibi. Starting the whole alibi game from scratch with less than a quarter left to go. The ending comes when Mark Warren and Sheriff Rourke gather all the suspect in the living room to expose whodunit, but does it all hold together? Yes... and no.

Date for Murder is a typical, so-called second stringer batting in the minor leagues of the American detective story and the ending betrays it. There are one, or two, things which "played into the murderer's hand" that are just second-rate (SPOILER/ROT13: Gurer ner gjb zheqreref jbexvat gbtrgure, ohg Yvax'f obql jnf erzbirq naq svkrq gb gur obggbz bs gur cbby ol n guveq crefba jbexvat vaqrcraqragyl sebz gur zheqreref). However, it's impressive how Trimble used everything from the date farm setting and the morally untethered characters ("seems they all roam around like a bunch of wild animals") to the odd clues and bedroom-and-bath alibis to punch up, what's ultimately, a simple and somewhat routine plot. However, while no Christopher Bush, Trimble's handling of those various alibis Boucher highlighted is not bush league. So everything appeared to work out better than it perhaps had any right to.

Louis Trimble obviously was not the most stylish mystery writer or best plotter of his day, but judging by Date for Murder, he tried to be the best mystery writer he could be and put more work into the plot than some other second-stringers encountered on this blog. I'm looking at you, Dana Chambers! Date for Murder can hardly be called perfect, however, I enjoyed it as a scrappy, mostly solid second-string detective story trying to punch above its weight.

The Hit List: Top 10 Beneficiaries of the Reprint Renaissance

After the frustrating "The Hit List: Top 5 Intriguing Pieces of Impossible Crime Fiction That Vanished into Thin Air" and the depressing homage to John Pugmire, "The Hit List: Top 10 Best Translations & Reprints from Locked Room International," I promised to pick an upbeat topic for the next hit list – instead of dwelling on what has been lost. There's enough to be positive and upbeat about.

Over the years, decades even, people like Philip Harbottle and Tony Medawar have resurrected obscure or never before published detective novels and short stories. Such as Christianna Brand's obscure, serialized short novel Shadowed Sunlight (1945) and John Russell Fearn's criminally underappreciated, posthumously published Pattern of Murder (2006). Not to mention the ongoing reprint renaissance that started small in the early 2000s, turned into a deluge around 2015 and only slowed down due to the untimely passing of Rupert Heath of Dean Street Press. Heath succeeded with DSP in filling the giant hole left behind by closure of the Rue Morgue Press by reprinting obscure, long out-of-print and unjustly forgotten authors en masse. They were not the only publishers who wanted to get in on the burgeoning Golden Age revival. And that gave me an idea.

So, with close to twenty-five years worth of reprints, who have benefited the most from their return to print? I thought a hit list with the ten obvious beneficiaries of nearly three decades would be a fun, easily compiled list, but, after the first few obvious examples, the lines began to blur a little – facts becoming mixed with personal tastes and view points. A beneficiary is not always about simply returning to print or selling copies. In that case, J.J. Farjeon deserves an entry solely for the British Library Crime Classics reprint of Mystery in White (1937) becoming an unexpected, runaway bestseller in 2024. There are writers who had both their work neglected and reputations in shambles, which in some cases entirely undeserved. A lot has been done to correct both by simply reprinting their (best) work.

The list turned out to be not as standard as fist imagined. However, it's rife with omissions whom, for one reason or another, should be on the list. So, whoever it's you're missing on the list, you probably have a point, but had to keep it limited to ten or would have ended up with another lumbering mammoth lists.

 

1. ANTHONY BERKELEY

Anthony Berkeley is acknowledged today as one of the most original, innovative minds of the Golden Age whose traditionally, but subversive, detective novels fueled the minds of his contemporaries and as "Francis Iles" predicted/pioneered the psychological crime-and thriller novel. John Dickson Carr considered Berkeley "the cleverest of us all," but, at the start of the century, he had been practically forgotten and out-of-print for decades – remembered mostly for "The Avenging Chance" (1928), The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and his psychological crime novels. During the early 2000s, Berkeley began to slowly reclaim his status as a Golden Age luminary when House of Stratus reprinted most of his obscure, long out-of-print titles like The Layton Court Mystery (1925), The Second Shot (1930) and Panic Party (1934). These editions descended into obscurity themselves to become over priced collector's items, but they already done their job and Berkeley has since received numerous reprints from various publishers. Notably, the 2021 Collins Crime Club reprint of The Wintringham Mystery (1926/27), which had not appeared in print for nearly a century. So, over the past two decades, Berkeley has slowly, but surely, regained his status as one of the brightest and original mystery writers of his generation.

 

I recommend Jumping Jenny (1933).

 

2. CHRISTIANNA BRAND

This entry is as last-minute alteration to the list and with good reason. Christianna Brand is not exactly obscure, not as well-known or appreciated as Christie, but she's always been highly regarded by fans of Golden Age detective fiction. Green for Danger (1944) was considered for decades as both one of the best World War II mysteries and the definitive Brand novel, but that's about to change. Green for Danger never had to duke it out with Brand's extremely scarce, out-of-print Death of Jezebel (1948). Now that it has finally returned to print, it appears to be on track to claim the title of "the definitive Brand novel." What's more, Death of Jezebel might unseat Carr's The Three Coffins (1935) as the iconic locked room mystery novel! Alexander, of The Detection Collection, is currently hosting a project to compile and put together a "New Locked Room Library." And mentioned in "New Locked Room Library: Second Round, Go!" how Death of Jezebel "absolutely dominated" the first round ("...being the only work that had been introduced by almost every single participant").

Death of Jezebel dethroning The Three Coffins would be an amazing, posthumous accomplishment, but there's also the growing list of excellent, previously unpublished short stories and novels – like Shadowed Sunlight (1945). I'm sure the as of now unpublished The Chinese Puzzle and the novella "The Dead Hold Fast" will join there ranks. Almost like Brand decided to ignore the fact that she's been dead for over thirty years to participate in the Golden Age revival. I think that more than warrants her inclusion on this list.

 

I recommend Death of Jezebel (1948).

 

3. FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS

If you told GAD fans in the 2000s that Crofts would not only find his way back to print, but that those reprints would be stacked in regular bookstores and appreciated by regular people who don't obsessively consume Golden Age detective fiction, they would have laughed you off the forums. Christie or Sayers? Sure. But not Crofts. The writer whose novels were tarred-and-feathered as the cure for insomnia and an early attempt by House of Stratus to reprint his work left no impression outside the then very niche fandom. Yet, that's exactly what happened, surprising even his own fans, when the British Library and HarperCollins began reprinting his work in earnest. More importantly, Crofts revival nearly lead to a TV series recasting the thoroughly competent and dependable Inspector French as an outcast policeman banished to the mean streets of Belfast with a dead or dying wife hovering in the background. Inspector French fortunately dodged that bullet or it would have been one of the most grievous cases of character assassination of a Golden Age detective character on record. I think what matters most is that the reprints allowed Crofts to rehabilitate his reputation as a sound plotter and somewhat underrated writer.

 

I recommend Mystery on the Channel (1930).

 

4. JOHN RUSSELL FEARN

I doubted whether, or not, to include John Russell Fearn. A writer whose roots are in the science-fiction pulp magazines of his days, but Fearn loved detective stories to the point where he simply started writing them himself and not wholly unsuccessful – albeit with varying degrees of quality. Nevertheless, Fearn's once obscure, almost forgotten detective fiction is widely available today, however, that would have happened regardless. The reason why Fearn's work is back in print is not due to a renewed interest in classic detective and impossible crime fiction, but the efforts of a single man. Philip Harbottle spent years navigating Fearn's maze-like bibliography of magazine publications, serials, unpublished material and enough pennames to populate a small village in order to restore Fearn's work to print (see the guest-post "The Detective Fiction of John Russell Fearn"). So, regardless of the reprint renaissance, Fearn's best detective novels like Except for One Thing (1947), Thy Arm Alone (1947), Flashpoint (1950) and Death in Silhouette (1950) would have been available no matter what. However, I decided it would be criminal to leave such an amazing resurrection of a distinct voice of the list.

 

I recommend Pattern of Murder (2006).

 

5. BRIAN FLYNN

I don't remember Brian Flynn ever being discussed or mentioned prior to 2017, which is when Steve Barge posted his review of The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (2018) on In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and began to obsessively collect Flynn's obscure catalog of detective novels – which proved to be incredibly contagious. The late Rupert Heath, of Dean Street Press, started reprinting Flynn's novels in 2019 and it was like opening a treasure room. A cache of virtually unknown classic mysteries and thrillers, because Flynn could turn his hand at every type of crime fiction. Most of Flynn's novels feature his series-detective, Anthony Bathurst, but in his casebook you find everything from Gothic thrillers and courtroom dramas to whodunits and the occasionally impossible crime. Even some excursions into pulp territory. So not everyone is going to like everything he wrote, but the overall quality of Flynn's fiction doesn't justify his baffling obscurity. People agreed as The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye defeated Carter Dickson's She Died a Lady (1943) for the 2019 Reprint-of-the-Year Award.

 

I recommend The Padded Door (1932). 

 

6. E.C.R. LORAC

In 1936, the critic "Torquemada" (The Observer) said that Lorac would soon find herself "an accepted member of that very small band which writes first-rate detective novels that are also literature." During her lifetime, Lorac garnered praise from all corners with her own, admittedly uneven, home brand of detective fiction ("we're not reinventing the wheel, but we are putting a different treat on the tyres"), but her work rapidly dropped out-of-print upon her death in 1958. And her reputation suffered. When your reputation hinges on relatively easy-to-get, secondhand copies of Murder by Matchlight (1945), you can understand why people dismissed her as dull and pedestrian. Martin Edwards and the British Library have gone a long way in recent years to correct that perception by cherry picking some of her best, out-of-print novels to reprint. I think it worked.

 

I recommend Death of an Author (1935).

 

7. GLADYS MITCHELL

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Gladys Mitchell was like an obscure, little-known cryptid you heard about every now and then, but the only reported sightings came from Nick Fuller and Jason Half. That's how deep Mitchell had descended into obscurity when the 2000s rolled around. Most of her novels were either difficult to obtain or impossible to find, which lasted until 2005, when the Rue Morgue Press reprinted some of Mitchell's highly regarded novels – like Death at the Opera (1934), Come Away, Death (1937) and When Last I Died (1941). In the same year, Crippen & Landru published a complete collection of short stories, Sleuth's Alchemy: Cases of Mrs. Bradley and Others (2005), edited by one Nick Fuller. After that Mitchell's work passed through numerous publishers until everything was widely available again in hardback, paperback and ebooks. Gladys Mitchell's detective fiction has been called an acquired taste and she has her fair share of critics, but her rise from total obscurity is second only to the resurrection of Sherlock Holmes from his water grave at Reichenbach Falls.

 

I recommend St. Peter's Finger (1938).

 

8. KELLEY ROOS

William and Audrey Roos were a husband-and-wife writing tandem who collaborated on a series of humorous, lighthearted, but often shrewdly plotted, mystery novels about a husband-and-wife detective team, Jeff and Haila Troy. Tom and Enid Schantz, of the Rue Morgue Press, called the Troys "funnier than the Norths, livelier than the Abbots, often more involved in doing the actual detection than the Justuses" and "a more convincing couple than the Duluths." Sadly, the Troys were not as well remembered as the Norths, Abbots and Duluths and the series practically forgotten until RMP reprinted a good chunk of their best work. One of them not only being the best of the series, but a masterpiece of the American detective story and murder-can-be-fun school that deserves to be reprinted (again).

If this entry strikes you as a little dubious, compared to the others on this list, you'd be correct. I had a ton of dubious, borderline cases (Harriette Ashbrook, Roger Scarlett, etc.). So decided to go with a personal favorite.

 

I recommend The Frightened Stiff (1942)

 

9. DEREK SMITH

Derek Smith was a book collector and detective fan who wrote, what many consider to be, one of the dozen best locked room mystery novels of all time, Whistle Up the Devil (1954). A second, reputedly classic impossible crime novel existed, but Come to Padding Fair (1997) was published in a limited print-run of a hundred copies in Japan. So not many people got to read it. Not until the late John Pugmire, of Locked Room International, published The Derek Smith Omnibus (2016) containing both novels. We have been arguing over which is the better impossible crime novel ever since. And, as a bonus, the omnibus include a previous unpublished Sexton Blake novel. Model for Murder (1952) apparently was too cerebral for its intended audience, which very likely makes it the best title in the Sexton Blake Library. Not a bad return on a single reprint.

 

I recommend Whistle Up the Devil (1954).

 

10. SEISHI YOKOMIZO

Seishi Yokomizo was one of Japan's most famous and still celebrated classical mystery novelists whose detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, is as iconic and recognizable as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot. A hugely influential honkaku writer. The current run of Yokomizo translations from Pushkin Vertigo feels like it struck a vein of previously inaccessible Golden Age detective fiction, unless you can read Japanese. But for us non-Japanese speaking mystery fans, the Yokomizo translations is like opening King Tut's tomb. I certainly appreciate the opportunity to read classics like Honjin satsujin jiken (The Honjin Murder, 1946) or Gokumontou (Death on Gokumon Island, 1947/48), because never before had (locked room) mystery fans/readers access to such wide, diverse selection of classic detective fiction from all across the world. It really enriches and added to the GAD period. And the list continues to grow. I see Yokomizo as the flagship author of those international writers falling between the reprint renaissance and translation wave. So, yes, this entry is more beneficial to us than Yokomizo, but I think he would been dissatisfied with seeing his novel going on a journey to the West.

 

I recommend Inugamika no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951).

 

The (Other) Hit Lists:

"Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Dean Street Press"

"Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25"

"Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels"

"Top 10 Non-English Detective Novels That Need to Be Translated"

Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death (2024) by P. Dieudonné

Five years ago, P. Dieudonné debuted with Rechercheur De Klerck en het doodvonnis (Inspector De Klerck and the Death Sentence, 2019) and since Dutch politieromans (police novels) à la A.C. Baantjer are as a rule shortish novels, Dieudonné has written two novels every year since then – even updating the tried and tested Baantjer formula. So what happened to the first of two releases of 2024 that should have been out for months now?

Rechercheur De Klerck en de sluier van de dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death, 2024) is the tenth entry in the Inspector De Klerck series and, to mark this milestone, E-Pulp Publishers told Dieudonné that "the tenth book could be a bit thicker." The delay was due to Dieudonné having to write a longer novel and was very curious to see what was done with the roughly hundred extra pages. Was it going to be a police-thriller with a hunt for a serial killer, another impossible crime extravaganza like Rechercheur De Klerck en de ongrijpbare dood (Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death, 2020) or returning to the first novel with a homage to Baantjer? However, the "most complicated case" in the careers of the inspectors Lucien de Klerck and Ruben Klaver turned out to be something different altogether.

De Klerck and Klaver, of the Rotterdam police, are called to a thrift store where a gruesome discovery was made inside a newly arrived, secondhand freezer.

A customer who wanted to inspect the freezer found the battered, partially dressed body of woman inside who bears a striking resemblance to Marilyn Monroe, but no identification, phone, money or jewelry – except for the red dress used to cover the body. The red dress is identified as an abaya that came with a hijab or veil. De Klerck notes that "both garments formed a dissonance in her appearance" as the victim's resemblance was deliberate. Right down to a cheek tattoo to replicate the tiny pigment spot. But without a name or solid clues as a starting point, De Klerck and Klaver turn their attention to the freezer.

The freezer was donated by Emir's Ice Palace, but the owner, Emir Çelik, denies any involvement ("it's not my habit to hide corpses in freezers") or knowing the victim. But when they go over CCTV footage of the ice salon, they see a veiled woman reasonable fitting the description of the victim enter the salon. And going to the backroom like she had done it before. Almost like she belonged there. Only she never came out. The old freezer was standing out back, waiting to be picked up, which can only be reached by a boat. So things begin to look grave for Emir Çelik when De Klerck and Klaver learns his marriage is going to rough patch. Zeynep Çelik has left their home and taken a room in Hotel Hollywood, "each room inspired by one of the major productions from Hollywood's Golden Age," which provides them with another lead. The hotel security footage shows the veiled lady going into the hotel with luggage and leaving without it, but why did the hotel denied she was a guest?

De Klerck and Klaver peddle between the hotel and ice saloon as the complications and contradictions pile on to the very end, which once again shows Dieudonné has knack for spinning a good deal of complexity out of ultimately simple situations and sordid crimes. I can't divulge much more about the plot details without spoilers. So let's take a different track to round down this review.

In many ways, Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death is a typical Dutch politieroman as formulated by Baantjer. A style of crime fiction a little bit different from the customary detective novels and police procedurals, because they tend to be more about what-happened-and-why than who and how – former decides how much of a sway the latter has over the plot. That's why you won't find many impossible crimes, dying messages or unbreakable alibis in the novels by Baantjer and his many imitators. Generally, they try to keep things clear, uncluttered and readable without too many unnecessary complications like locked rooms or dying clues. Last year, I returned to Baantjer by rereading one of his late period novels and one of the comments said it book sounded fun, but probably out of their wheelhouse. Fair enough, especially for the detective fans who follow this blog. After all, we're an eccentric lot who have certain demands when it comes to the plot.

Practically everyone who tried to be next "Baantjer" only copied his style with a few tweaks and cosmetic changes, but Dieudonné is the first who took the formula and developed it further. Such as loosening the tight formula, depicting the world of today and injecting some sorely needed plot complexity. I've said this before in previous reviews, but Baantjer never could have written, or plotted, novels like Inspector De Klerck and the Elusive Death and Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death. Inspector De Klerck and the Veil of Death pleasingly creates "an endless labyrinth of possibilities" out of very simple complications. Not what I expected from the tenth, double-sized De Klerck novel, but neither am I complaining and it's always a special treat to read mysteries with substantial plots in my own language. So imagine how pleased I'm with this excellent series as a whole. Just needs another locked room-centric novel with a meaty impossible crime plot to continue this run of success! :D

So, in closing, Dieudonné is the pupil who surpassed the master and hope it won't take forever for the rest of the country to catch on. Until then, I look forward to the eleventh outing of De Klerck and Klaver. Fingers crossed it will be out before the end of the year!

Gotta Knock a Little Harder: "Knockin' On Locked Door" (2014) by Aosaki Yugo

Recently, this blog went through another period in which the locked room mystery and impossible crime reviews crowded everything else out, which I always correct after a while until it happens again – starting the correction this time with a review of Agatha Christie's Peril at End House (1932). So wanted to stable my hobby horse to focus attention elsewhere, however, someone decided to put together the "New Locked Room Library." In May, I received the list with selected titles, "the result is exquisite," to be voted on for inclusion in the new, updated Locked Room Library. Surprisingly, there's enough exotic material included I either hadn't read yet, were unknown to me or had no idea they were even available.

So this not an excuse to jump right back on my hobby horse, but simply doing homework to be an informed voter when the time comes to cast my ballots.

I wasn't exaggerating when saying the first selection has some "exotic material," which ranges from the expected novels and short stories to games, game segments, radio-plays and fan fiction – even a handful of so-called fanlations. I reviewed a fanlation of Ooyama Seiichiro's short story "Kanojo ga Patience wo korosu hazu ga nai" ("She Wouldn't Kill Patience," 2002) and today's subject is another one. But is it a short story that belongs in the 21st century locked room library? Let's find out!

Aosaki Yugo is a popular, award-winning mystery writer who debuted with the novel Taiikukan no satsujin (The Gymnasium Murder, 2012) and has since produced two collections of short stories in the "Knockin' On Locked Door" series. "Knockin' On Locked Door" (2014), originally published in Dokuraku magazine, introduces the reader to the two private investigators of the Knockin' On Locked Door Detective Agency, Gotenba Tori and Katanashi Hisame. A specialized agency with the specialized detectives who split "responsibilities according to the nature of the puzzle." Tori is a specialist in the seemingly impossible ("...strong in elucidating tricks"), while Hisame's "forte is in searching for motives and reasons." So a series intertwining the puzzle plot, or howdunits, with equally puzzling motives (whydunits). Their first client who comes knocking ("...no intercom is provided") presents them with exactly such a case.

Kasumiga Mizue's husband is the well-known painter, Hideo, nicknamed "The Poet of the Sky," who has been murdered under inexplicable circumstances. Hideo was remodeling his attic room into a studio and spent entire days there, until the previous day. Hideo had not come down from the attic room/studio nor does he respond to the knocks on the locked door, which is when they decide to force their way inside and find Hideo's body lying in the middle of the room – a knife planted in his back. The only way in, or out, of the locked studio is the door as the skylight was fixed and solid in place. One of the six paintings in the studio was completely over painted with red.

So how was it done? Because the locked room specialist quickly finds out the lock on the door leaves precious little room for manipulation ("...this 'pin-and-thread' thing would be hard to implement"). Why even bother creating a locked room scenario when there's no question of suicide? The victim was stabbed in the back with a knife that was wiped clean and rarely locked the door behind him. There's always the question of whodunit. Was it the wife, the son or the visiting friend and art dealer?

While not playing entirely fair, the explanation delivers as the locked room-trick is completely original and beautifully balances on the double motive. The motive for the murder and the reason why the murder was turned into a locked room mystery. Only thing holding "Knockin' On Locked Room" from a status as an instant impossible crime classic is that you have no shot at figuring out the reason behind it all, which is a shame, because the way in which the how and why are put together is incredibly pleasing. Not to mention that I expected something much simpler and less original from the premise, which fortunately turned out not to be the case.

So, all in all, "Knockin' On Locked Door" is a solid introduction to the series with a plot standing on the threshold of being a minor impossible crime classic and sports a truly original locked room-trick. Not a perfectly executed detective story, but a really good one deserving to be translated and would love the read the rest of the series.

Note for the curious: If you're wondering in which direction I expected the solution was headed, I thought the locked room came about by accident. Sort of. Hideo rarely locked himself into the studio ("...disliked the lock and rarely used it"), but he might have done this time. Why? Someone had to paint red all over one of the canvases and Hideo was already in the studio. So why make things more complicated than needed, but why would he deface one of his own paintings? More on that in a moment. First, the problem of the locked attic room: the room is described as surprisingly large, presumably high, where "the fierce rays of August sun" coming through the round skylight light the room – which gave me an idea. It's possible for those fierce rays of sunshine to hide a small, round cutout in the glass when looking up. A small, round cutout through which a knife can be dropped, but that might not have even been its original purpose. The culprit could have used the cutout to drip red paint on one of the paintings and remained up there to gloat, but saw Hideo (for some reason) painting over the vandalized painting (like trying to cover it up and why he locked the door) and that (again for some reason) angered the culprit. And dropped a knife, while Hideo was bending over. Not a particular good solution, or a very well developed one, but that's the idea I was toying with while reading. Rest assured, Aosaki Yugo came up with a far superior solution.

Peril at End House (1932) by Agatha Christie

Peril at End House (1932) is one of Agatha Christie's often overlooked novels forever standing in the shadows of her famous, widely celebrated genre classics like Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Death on the Nile (1937) and And Then There Were None (1939) – which holds true for nearly all of her so-called "second tier" mysteries. If another name had graced the covers of such titles as Lord Edgware Dies (1933), Murder is Easy (1939), Towards Zero (1944) and After the Funeral (1953), they would have been hailed as classic whodunits "Worthy of Christie."

I always viewed Peril at End House as the poster child of otherwise excellent mystery novels eclipsed by their author's more famous works. John Dickson Carr's The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939), Carter Dickson's The Reader is Warned (1939), Clayton Rawson's The Footprints on the Ceiling (1939) and Christianna Brand's Suddenly at His Residence (1946) all belong to this category. Peril at End House is admittedly not Christie's best detective novel, but I always liked it and wanted to see if can stand up to a fresh read. This time in English as I previously only read the Dutch translation, Moord onder vuurwerk (Murder During Fireworks).

Hercule Poirot is on the Cornish coast with his chronicler and long-time friend, Captain Arthur Hastings, enjoying both a holiday and a well-deserved retirement, simply content with sitting in the sun – proclaiming "I am not a stage favourite who gives the world a dozen farewells." Hastings warns him "such an emphatic pronouncement will surely tempt the gods." Just moments later, Poirot twists his ankle in the hotel garden and is helped by a woman, Nick Buckley, who owns the nearby End House. A "tumble-down old place" going "to rack and ruin" lacking a family ghost or curse, but she tells them she had "three escapes from sudden death in as many days." After saying goodbye, Poirot becomes very worried as she didn't swat away a wasp when they were talking. Poirot shows Hastings a spent bullet he picked up from the ground and the accompanying bullet hole in the hat she left behind. Someone is obviously trying to kill her!

So they go to End House to return the hat and warn Nick Buckley of the impending danger. There they find the usual, tightly-knit group of potential suspects. Mrs. Frederica "Freddie" Rice is Nick's greatest friend and confident who had a rotten life married to a beast of a man who abandoned her. Nick wishes she divorced him in order to marry their friend and Bond Street art dealer, Jim Lazarus. Commander George Challenger is another friend who wishes to marry Nick Buckley, but she sees no future in such a marriage ("...neither of us got a bean"). The gatehouse lodge is rented to an Australian couple, the Crofts, who Hastings labeled as friendly, pleasant and typical Australians. Poirot suggests they were, perhaps, playing "a part just a little too thoroughly." Charles Vyse is Nick's cousin and solicitor, but disapproves of her mode of life and hopes to reform her one day.

However, Poirot has a hard time convincing Nick her life is actually in danger. Nick finds the whole idea very amusing, "I'm not the beautiful young heiress whose death releases millions," but Poirot eventually convinces her to take it somewhat seriously and call down a friend to stay with her – she asks one of her Yorkshire cousins, Maggie. Unfortunately, the murderer mistakes Maggie for Nick, wearing her red shawl, shoots her during a firework show. So whodunit? And, more importantly, why? The motive really is the crux of the story.

The reason why Peril at End House has a poor reputation is that the murderer is not very well hidden, which is something you come to expect from the Queen of the Whodunit. This is true. I clearly remember from my first reading stumbling to the murder rather effortlessly, because even as a complete neophyte some things were so obvious they're impossible to miss and arouse suspicions. I think this was done on purpose as the real puzzle is not the identity of the murderer, but piecing together the cleverly hidden, fairly clued motive. Poirot himself remarks, "we must find the motive if we are to understand this crime." Peril at End House is a whydunit and not a bad one either. I love plot-oriented tropes like impossible crimes, unbreakable alibis and dying messages, but always dislike it when a detective story tacks on the motive as an after thought. If you want a good, solid plot, you also need pretty good motivation, not only to commit murder, but a reason to rig up a locked room scenario or an apparently air-tight alibi. So appreciated to see Christie applying her plotting skills to the why, for once, rather than the who and how.

That being said, Peril at End House could have worked as a whydunit with a stronger whodunit angle had Poirot (SPOILER/ROT13) sbbyrq rirelbar vapyhqvat Unfgvatf naq gur ernqre vagb oryvrivat gur svany nggrzcg ba Avpx jnf fhpprffshy, orsber gebggvat ure bhg ng gur fénapr sbe gur ovt erirny. N perfgsnyyra Cbvebg, orfgrq bapr ntnva ol n obk bs cbvfbarq pubpbyngrf, jbhyq unir arngyl qrsyngrq gur fhfcvpvba ntnvafg ure.

Peril at End House seems to be one of Christie's shortest novels, certainly read like her shortest novel, which might not have allowed for enough room to do justice to both. So all the attention went into the better idea. Namely the motive. I liked it. I can also see why Peril at End House comes up short for many compared to other Poirot novels as the plots feels slighter and rather obvious, in some ways, than most entries in the series – not to mention it lacks that hook to grab your attention. In that regard, Peril at End House is no Death in the Clouds (1935), The A.B.C. Murders (1936) or Cards on the Table (1936), but still a very well done, soundly plotted mystery novel in its own right. A mystery novel with a great idea at its core and brazenly clued. It's just that the name Agatha Christie demands something more than Peril at End House can deliver. A little unfair as it's still an excellent detective story and had it been written by someone like Christopher Bush (The Case of the Fatal Fireworks), it would have ranked as one of the five best Ludovic Travers novels. But that's the curse of being a so-called "second stringer" in the oeuvre of one of the best, most successful and famous authors the genre has produced in its 183 year history.

Note for the curious: the universally praised A Murder is Announced (1950) is next on the AC reread pile, because everyone keeps defending it and don't remember it being that good. But then again, I'm not a fan of Miss Marple. Even less so back then. So who knows what a fresh read might reveal. However, I might first return to the much neglected (on this blog, anyway) Dorothy L. Sayers.